The Concept of Identity

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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

A. The Concept of Identity

Identity is something important in our live to show different characteristic and to complete one other. It gives us an idea of who we are and how we relate to others and the world in which we live. Identity marks the ways in which we are the same as others who share that position, and the ways in which we are different from those who do not. As du Gay, Hall et al. said: “Identities are produced, consumed and regulated within culture – creating meanings through symbolic systems of representation about the identity positions which we might adopt.” 7 It is clearly defined from the statement above that identity is produced, consumed, and regulate with the others. It is not only ending up with belonging, but it is more than that. Identity is also about social relationship, and often about values. By saying who we are, we are also expressing what we are, what we believe, and what we desire. “…du Gay, Hall et al. argue that in order to get a full understanding of a cultural text or artifact, it is necessary to analyze the processes of representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation.” 8 7 Kathryn Woodward, Identity and Difference London; SAGE Publications The Open University. p. 2. 8 Ibid. p. 2. Circuit of Culture As this is a circuit 9 , it is possible to start any point; it is not a linear, sequential process. Each moment in the circuit is also inextricably tied up with each of the others, but they are separated here in order to allow us to focus on particular moments. The study of representation includes symbolic system – of language and visual images, for example – such as those involved in advertising a product like the Walkman, which produces meanings about the sorts of people who would use such an artifact, that is the identities associated with it. These identities and the artifact with which they are associated are produced, both technically and culturally, in order to target the consumers who buy the product with which they – the producers hope - will identify. As Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora explains: “Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a production, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation.” 10 9 Kathryn Woodward, Identity and Difference London; SAGE Publications.The Open University. p. 2. 10 Ibid p. 51. The quotation above shows that identity is often addressed as problematic. Because, identity gives us a location in the world and present the link between us and the society in which we live; this has made the concept the subject of increased academic interest as a conceptual tool with which to understand and make sense of social, cultural, economic, and political change. For example, the loss of identity which may be seen as accompanying changes in employment and job losses, the search for identity which follows the break up of communities or of personal relationships and even ‘identity crisis’. “Just now every body wants to talk about ‘identity’… identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something assumed to be fixed, coherent and stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and uncertainty.” 11 Mercer, 1990, p. 4 This quotation shows a number of different contexts in which questions of identity and identity crisis have become central, including globalization and the processes associated with global change, question of history, social change and political movements. In Lacan’s reinterpretation of Freud 12 “the problematic identity of the self or subject is explored further”. For Lacan, self consciousness emerges only at the mirror stage at approximately six to eighteen months. Here the infant recognizes its reflection as a reflection of itself. It therefore comes to know itself, not directly, but through the mirror image. The self emerges as the promise of control in the face of the fragmentation that occurs as the child is separated from the mother. 11 Ibid p.15 12 Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick, Cultural Theory the Key Concepts Routledge; London New York, p. 183 However, as for Freud, the male child’s identity depends upon that of the mother allowing, in English at least, a pun on mother”. In effect, this is to argue that the self or more properly the subject is positioned by language, which is to say that is positioned as always repressing its own lack of unity. Therefore, the writer assumes that identity is not an absolute and permanent thing. It is related to the history and culture and how the individuals positioned them selves. As Hall 1996: 4 puts it: “we need to situate the debates about identity within all those historically specific developments and practices which have disturbed the relatively ‘settled’ character of many population and cultures, above all in relation to the processes of Globalization…and the processes of forced and ‘free’ migration which have become a global phenomenon. 13 However, we have to situate identity related with all process of globalization and process of forced and ‘free’ migration which have become a global phenomenon. That’s way the writer does not only use the identity concept but also the concept of cultural identity.

B. The Concept of Cultural Identity